Cy Pres
by skyfare
Summary: This is what family does to you. Sequel to Stare Decisis. T for language--and now smut, in chapter five. Maybe not technically considered smut. Depends on what the strict definition of "smut" is. Whatever. There is sex to be had, people.
1. Prologue

"**As near as possible"**

**A/N. Long ass author's note, so feel free to skip:**

**My take on why Goren's acting so differently this season (well, in the first half, at least). Parts of this might be AU, as I have Goren and Eames together, and I have no idea about Eames actual family and what they're like and their names, so I'm making all of that up (isn't writing fantastic? creative license and whatnot). It might be angsty--oh, who am I kidding--it _will _be angsty, but without giving anything away there will be a happy ending, of sorts.**

**The prologue is mostly setting the scene, atmosphere, etc., and the actual plot begins in chapter one (just to let you know that there _will _be a plot, it's not going to be 14,000 words of how Goren feels, although that would be fun to do). I'm still not entirely satisfied with this, but I like it, which is more than I could say five revisions ago. And I'm pretty sure this is going to be a long story.**

**I don't own them, not making any money off this, just for fun, etc.**

**Okay, I think that's it. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading!**

_Prologue_

He feels like he's sinking. Like he's smoke and vapor while everyone else is liquid in the ocean. Like he's just fading away, separated from his previous life as firmly as the ideal promised in weight loss commercials: here sickly, flabby, limp-haired and grim and alone; then four weeks of this diet or pill and suddenly here tan and shiny, firm, confident, better lit, disassociating from the _before _as if that *other* person never even existed.

It's the _split _he just can't get over. The _divide_.

His old life, where his family was dysfunctional but alive. His father was abusive, sure, a deadbeat, certainly, but not a serial killer.

His old life, where he was not with Eames.

And now, the new, the present. All his biological family is dead, save for a missing 19 year old nephew. His father was one of the most prolific serial killers in decades.

And he is with Eames.

Is it better to be the unhappy before or the shallow paranoid after? Is it worth it to be more confident if you have to ferociously deny your previous existence?

He can't decide. He's stopped thinking about it, mostly. He doesn't think about much of anything anymore, not even Eames, really (whereas for so long she was practically _all _he thought about).

Not thinking is nice. No panic attacks when he's so numb and blank and quiet. When he's not thinking about the brief flickering disaster that was his family. When he's not thinking about how he's probably going to screw things up with Eames so she'll leave him and then he'll be all, all alone, again, alone again, alonealonealone_again_.

He feels like he's in purgatory waiting for something to inevitably happen that will destroy his carefully preserved Shield of Numbness (trademarked 2008/9 Detective Goren).

He can feel the tension in the air. The worry emanating off of Eames. The reedy threads of stress and impatience in her voice as she talks to him in the night, her hands on him trying to convince him for more, and in the early mornings when they're both awake and silent in bed, covered but not warm, not in pain but not comfortable, still but not relaxed. Not unhappy, but not exactly joyous, either. In the stasis of so _this _is their relationship—mostly just awkward and quiet.

But he doesn't mind that they're not moving, because maybe there isn't a whole hell of a lot left to move forward too.

In another lifetime he supposes he would have analyzed this.

Depression? (maybe)

Peace? (doubtful)

Acceptance? (eh)

Life? (?)

Freedom? (no)

_No._

He doesn't _want _it to be freedom. He doesn't want Declan, in his twisted murderous fucking annihilistic way, to be right. He doesn't want the pieces of his life to be…bad, somehow, a virus—no, no a _cancer_, hidden and insidious and spreading until the grand splashy entrance of pain; something necessitating removal and eradication from memory with a harsh radioactive clinicality, each unbelonging cell blotted out and destroyed for the greater good.

It makes him sick to think of it.

His _treatment_.

His _freedom_.

And the only side effect is that he's suddenly become this walking zombie unaware of his own decay. A puppet pretender among the veined throbbing alive.

This is what family does to you.

**Thanks to Daystar Searcher for correcting my mistake :)**


	2. Chapter One

_Chapter One_

Eames pushes the few pictures of her family around on her desk aimlessly, thinking of dusting the small bodies of dust left behind. Instead, she chucks her pen cap at her mute partner, trying to get a reaction from him.

The cap bounces off his nose. Time suspends. She waits for the sluggish gears in his brain to start churning as the minutes scrape away.

Eventually he gives what she supposes he thinks is a smile.

"I think you lost this."

He hands the cap back to her and she rubs his fingers quickly. A test, she supposes. Of what, she's not sure, but a test nonetheless.

He pulls his hand away and closes his eyes.

D+

(at least he didn't storm off)

But that would have been better then this new _nothing_ he's become. A side effect of the panic attacks, she supposes, that started after the first time they slept together. And they kept sleeping together, and the panic attacks kept coming, and then they stopped sleeping together, and the panic attacks still kept coming, and then they finally stopped _talking _to each other, mostly, and the panic attacks mostly stopped.

"I just don't want to feel," he whispered to her in the midst of the last real panic attack he had (to her knowledge). Three in the morning, coats on but no shoes, trying to decide if this is another episode or if it's a heart attack or a stroke or the onset of MS or a brain aneurysm or any of the _millions _of medical problems it could be, and if they should go to the hospital again or wait it out.

He shook, shuddered, clung to her as she got drenched in his sweat and felt the vibration of his heart against hers until she thought she was going to lose it herself. He wouldn't look directly at her, didn't talk much, just kept running his hands flat up and down her back and pressing his head against her shoulder.

"I think we should go, Bobby," she said.

And he refused.

And she's still today trying to figure out if he was embarrassed or if he knew it was a panic attack or if he maybe just didn't care if he lived or not.

And now he's checked himself out without actually doing the deed; a suicide of the mind, she thinks. He's deliberately draining himself just so he doesn't have to _feel_.

She can't imagine that.

There has to be a way to get him back.

***

Friday night, in the elevator, Eames turns to him. "Come home with me tonight."

He hears her words like they're coming at him through a tunnel, barreling down on him as he stands motionless and unresponsive, tied to the tracks. Willing to be run over. He should respond, he knows, but he can't decide what to say and the trying to decide wears him out even more until he can't even begin to dredge up the energy to speak words he doesn't have and so he stays silent, thinking of his bed and the slow seductiveness of the chance just to break down for a couple of hours in the night.

"Bobby. It'll…do you good to get away for a bit."

That's what she said after he got out of Tates. And he listened. Did it help?  
He can't remember.

"Or I'll come home with you," she says blindly. She grabs his arm, kneading his flesh with her strong fingers as if trying to make sure that he's really there.

"Say _something_, Bobby. Come on."

"Okay," he says softly, and he's not exactly sure what he's agreeing to, but it seems to make her happier so he supposes it's all right.

So she inserts him in her car and drives him home. She's become more forceful, lately, like she's trying to incite him into action purely through the force of her own intensity. As if passion were contagious and she's deliberately sneezing on him. He thinks she's beginning to realize just how strong his immune system is, though, because she's getting stronger and more forceful—irritated he's somehow remained healthy despite her best assaults.

"Italian or Chinese for dinner?" she asks once they're in his apartment.

"I don't care."

"_Decide._"

Something shorts out and he ends up frozen, mouth half open, unsure and lost.

Eames turns away and calls their order in herself.

"What do you want to do until the food comes?" Her eyes searching his as if her question is something so much more than carefully emphasized words and that upwards infliction, something immortal and decisive and defining.

"What do you want to do?" he responds, far too late.

She nods slowly and it becomes apparent that he's failed, again.

"I want you to talk to me, Bobby."

He sort of likes how she rushes right through the mine-filled lands—no dainty picking around sordid subjects for _her _unlike everyone else he talks to (who else does he talk to?).

"Tell me what's going on."

He shakes his head. "Nothing's going on."

"Bullshit." She grabs his face in her hands, sliding her hands up through his curls and twisting her fingers in his hair. "_Bobby_. Come on. Say _something_. Tell me…something. Anything. Tell me about the Slinky guy again, I don't care, tell me the chemical composition of ice cream or recite PI to the thousandth degree or tell me you miss talking to me…_anything_."

_blank_

She pulls his head down to hers, her lips stabbing for his until she's kissing him so hard it hurts, the usual warmth dissolved into teeth clanking and gum rubbing and something so painful it even reaches him, dimly, through the fog, until he thinks: _oh no_.

She's going to leave.

And more than the fact that he doesn't want to be alone; he doesn't want to be without _her_, no matter how much he pushes her away.

But he can't soften the kiss; he can't make this right.

She pulls away. Gives him a terrible look—disappointment and regret and sadness rolled into one.

"I want to be with you," she says quietly. "I do. God, Bobby, I…do. But I can't be with you if you're not _you_. You've turned into a zombie. You're just going through the motions, and…I can't do that."

"You're breaking up with me," he states.

She reaches out and touches his cheek, and he leans into her hand, trying to soak up these last few Alex moments.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she murmurs. "I…need some time. And you've been through a lot…you need to figure some things out. And…I think I'm going to go now."

He blinks, nods. "Okay."

"Way to fight for me, Goren," she says softly. "All the times I've fought for you."

And then she's gone.

_blank_

Hello, floor.

_blank_

At some point the takeout order Eames called in arrives, and the delivery person bangs on the door for what seems like infinity. He lies there under the assault of the noise until it stops, finally, and then the phone rings, and then his heart begins to pound, and he keeps his eyes closed and doesn't move and wills himself not to feel anymore.

_blank _

Three am.

Doorbell.

It's not locked.

_Bang _bang bang bang bang.

_It's open_, he thinks from his prone position, because perhaps in the last few hours the laws of physics have changed and thoughts now possess the ability to be heard (_in that case _Alex _I'm sorry I'm sorry come back I don't know how to do this and everything's getting to be too much and it's not you it's just that it's easier this way and_)

And the door swings open.

And maybe in this new terrible world the universe _has _changed, because it's Eames.

_Still._

Her capacity for him is astounding.

"Bobby." Dressed in sweatpants and a tank top now, she sits down cross-legged, compact and red-eyed and drained and far away but it doesn't matter because he no longer has the right to touch her anyway. "Look."

His head rolls towards her.

"I get that you're struggling. And you're…depressed. Clearly." Her voice cracks. "And I don't know what to do. I think that you need to get over the fear of becoming your mother and go to the doctor and go to therapy and figure some things out and maybe even take some medication, Bobby, because whatever else you are you are _not _your mother—you are not anyone but you. Okay?"

"Sometimes I wonder," he whispers. "It…sometimes I see my family in myself." She is perhaps the only person in the world who makes him feel quite so exposed and vulnerable and yet _safe _at the same time, safe enough to say these things he'd never even be able to say to himself. He closes his eyes, feels the warm weight of her hand settle against her chest.

She snorts, but it's gentle and reassuring and kind because _she _is kind, to him, even though he so rarely deserves it. "You are the most unique person I've ever known," she murmurs, laying down beside him. "Seriously. I see no one but _you _in you. It's…" she fades off, and he thinks she's not going to continue on. "It's one of the things I like so much about you."

"You shouldn't. You shouldn't like me, Alex." He swallows, shakes his head. "I'm not good for you. You have to look out for yourself."

She slides her arm around his stomach and throws her leg over his, enveloping him in her. "I am looking out for myself." He rolls his head over to see her as she rolls her head over to see him. "I need you too," she whispers (_definite shift in physics_). "We're connected, Bobby. You can't deny that."

Eyes still closed, he takes her hand and they fall asleep together, two dysfunctional middle-aged cops stretched out flat on the floor in New York.

Three hours later:

Darkness shattered into blaring noise. A groggy jerk back into unhappy awareness. His face is pressed into her neck, he finds, and his hands are wrapped securely around her shirt so he can feel the warm skin of her stomach rubbing against his knuckles. Her leg is between his and her arms are thrust around him.

He reaches out to her in sleep, why can't he in life?

Eames' phone keeps ringing and ringing and ringing.

"Work?" he mumbles blearily into her neck. "'S leave it. Pretend we didn't hear it." He's not even sure he's functionable at this point.

She rolls away from him and sits up, pushing her hair out of her eyes as she scrabbles for the phone in her pocket.

"It's my sister." She flips the phone open, shoves it against her ear. "Issy? What happened?"

Her voice is so terrifyingly controlled that he sits up so he can see her face, her small, blankly tense face. "Calm down. Where is she?" Pause. "I'll be there."

"What's wrong?" But his voice gets lost in the shuffle of her sliding out of his hands and tying her hair up in a chaotic ponytail as she fumbles for her keys.

"I have to go. My grandmother is…my grandmother is sick. They don't know if she's going to make it."

Her eyes are large and clear and wide, and they do not focus on him as they blink once, slowly, before she turns away.

"Eames."

"The rest of my family is at the hospital. I should be there with them." She is eerily calm.

He stands up far too fast and the rush of blood to his head makes him dizzy. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I couldn't understand Issy. Crying too much. What are you doing?" she asks when she sees him shuffling around staring at the floor.

"I'm coming with you? Have you seen my shoes?"

"My _partner _wouldn't come with me. My family doesn't know about—my family doesn't know yet."

"Maybe you were at your _partner's _apartment working on a case, and fell asleep, and he decided to drive you to the hospital." He watches her brow furrow and her hands take on a life of their own, flicking spasmodically through her hair, her fingers steepling together and then sliding apart. "And besides," he adds quietly. "Right now aren't we just partners?"

He holds his breath, waits for the answer.

"I don't know, Bobby. But my family's not stupid. They'll figure out that there's…something there."

He staggers towards her and she holds her hands up. "Go back to bed. I'll call you in the morning."

"Alex…"

"I can't _do _this now. Okay? My grandmother is getting…old. She fell a couple of weeks ago, and at first the doctors thought it was a stroke, but then they said she just fell, and she's—fading, sort of, and it's so…weird seeing her shaky like this because she's so—she's so strong, Bobby, and it's like she's the ruler of the family, we all instinctively defer to her even when she's not ruling anything anyway, and—she's getting sick and old and—"

He pulls her to him and envelops her in his arms, feeling her hands twitching against his sides. It's an inadequate gesture, he knows, but he has to stop this terrible disjointed stream of words coming out of her seemingly unnoticed.

"Hey," he says gently. "Just…breathe, for a second."

She presses her forehead into his chest but then pulls away. "I don't _have _a second. I have to go."

"Let me drive you."

She starts to shake her head but he lays his hand on her cheek and brushes his thumb over her chilly skin.

"Hey. I…want to do this. For you." She gazes at him warily, and he manages a pale imitation of a reassuring smile. "We'll definitely get there faster if I drive."

"We might not get there in one piece," she mutters. But she shoves the keys at him as he grabs his jacket. "Hurry."


	3. Chapter Two

She's seen how he drives when no one's with him. Far too fast. Slamming brakes and cutting corners and passing haphazardly. But tonight, now that she wants him to drive like the possessed, he doesn't. He goes over the speed limit, sure, because in the streets of New York, if you're the buzzkill going 35 you are going to get _crushed_, but other than that he's a model cautious driver, even throwing his arm out in front of her when someone cuts them off and he has to grind the brakes.

"Could you go a little faster?"

He gives her a grim smile. "First time I've ever heard you say that." The needle edges up closer to sixty and she nods, then turns back to face the window, small and still and stiffly contained.

A quick cold trip through the parking lot and then they burst into the hospital, making the receptionist jump.

Her skin is buzzing, possessed suddenly by subversive skittering gremlins. She can't stop shaking, but she feels disconnected from herself. Highly attuned to each individual particle of air attacking her body. All the chances in the atmosphere.

"I'm looking for Marjorie Eames."

Nothing.

No response other than a faint inward drawing of the eyebrows.

"Hello?" she snaps. "Marjorie Eames? What room is she in? Where is she?"

"She died," the receptionist says at last. "A nurse just told me. They're moving her down to the morgue. I'm so sorry."

Bobby catches up to her and then everything goes quiet, tilting and crashing and swirling soundlessly around her.

"The rest of the family is on the fourth floor, room 424, if you want to meet up with them."

_blank_

A hand brushes her waist, and her body turns around to find Bobby staring at her intently. "I'm sorry," he whispers. He shakes his head slightly. "Alex. I'm so sorry."

How odd.

Her body turns and heads for the elevator. Her boots click down the long tiled hallway with a sound so over-consuming it's all she can think about. _Click _click _click _click _click _click _my _grandmother _is _dead _my _grandmother _is _dead.

My _grandmother_.

Is _dead_.

In the elevator Bobby hesitantly rests his hand on her shoulder and then, when she doesn't pull away, gives her a quick clumsy kiss on the top of her head.

She stands stiff and unmoving, claustrophobic in the elevator and lost in the openness of the world.

"I'm sorry," Bobby's voice says again, sliding over her, through her hair and between her toes, his voice hitting all her crevices—elbows, behind the knees, under her ears.

She stays immobile.

She used to think about this so much. About something going wrong. About things changing—a sickness, a divorce, a move. A death. She'd get so worked up over even the possibility of this happening that she'd end up pacing through the house frantically at one two three in the morning, moving just to absolve some of the pointless worry (oh, Joe used to hate that so much, her restless late night roamings).

When Joe died…she remembers tears. Lots of tears. Flailing around in bed beating her fists against the twisted sheets and blankets. Screaming. Being devoured whole, his death ripping away at her until it shredded a giant hole in her chest cavity, her heart gone, nothing left but bits of tissue and shorn veins exposed and gushing and plasma exploding out.

But apparently now her grandmother's gone and she's just blank.

***

He doesn't know what to do. This is not unusual for him, lately, but now more than ever he would like to have some spark of an idea of what is right and what is appropriate and what his partner wants. Should he touch her again? She didn't pull away the last time, but neither did she exactly respond. Should he say something else? Or let her alone? If he _had _to guess, he'd say that's what she really wants, but he's been wrong with her before (_so very, very wrong_), and there's always the possibility that he's just projecting.

"Alex," he begins, not having the faintest idea of what he's going to continue on with.

She turns flat eyes to him and he prepares to plunge in.

"Don't, Bobby." Expressionless. "Just don't."

Right.

She turns away.

He is left to stare at the numbers blinking fluid yellow as they move slowly up the floors, but all he can see is this portal into more fear and more worry and emotions. This portal that feels so horribly familiar all over again; a deathly déjà vu. There will be tears, and shaken family, and discussion over the obituary. Talk of what to put in the casket. Horrible charades of viewings. Funerals. Memories to recall. Dreams to have. Thank you notes to write. Things to be cleared out. This whole fucking process of a life being sucked away into whatever comes after this, if anything.

Sometimes the world seems like nothing more than ripped chances and destruction.

He sways, and reaches his hand out to Alex to steady himself. She feels slippery under his fingers, her body humming and spastically trembling so that when he grabs on to her he feels even unsteadier than before.

_Bing! _

Fourth floor.

Alex glides off down into the hallway, nearly swallowed up by walking IV poles and donation plaques and unobjectionable pastel art. He follows, head bent to avoid the looks (_God he's tall and awkward and is he with _her_ she's so gorgeous such a person could you imagine a more unlikely pairing and I bet they won't last_).

But then they get to room 424 and everyone's crying and the doctors are spitting out words so fast it makes his head spin and his partner's grandmother _isn't _dead, after all.

"What the fuck _happened_?" Alex whispers into the chaos.

Issy reaches out for her but she rips herself out of her sister's hands, staring accusedly at everyone as if they were responsible for this. "She's _alive_?"

"She died and came back," Issy manages to say. "Something happened, she fell, and then there was internal bleeding and they were trying to get that stopped when—when she _died, _and then she just _came back, _and they got the bleeding stopped and now it's—she didn't have a DNR or anything so they resuscitated her and now they're saying she might live."

Alex turns to him, her eyes wide, and takes his hand.

He thinks of second chances. Of Easter coming up, and rebirth. But mostly, of the way his partner is gasping as if she's just finished her hour at the rowing machine.

He rests his hands on her shoulders and begins massaging, slowly. Her father's eyes zoom over and rest warily on them, but then the machines start beeping and her mother starts crying and a distraction comes in the form of numbers on the monitor dropping.

The portal opening again.

**A/N. I think this chapter is a little like "and it was all a dream," but I do have something I'm working towards, so trust me in that I'm not needlessly jerking around with your emotions (although what is angst if not that?—and this is definitely angst). **


	4. Chapter Three

**A/N. Should clarify, every time see *** POV changes**

They are all herded out into a waiting room cluttered with paisley chairs and faintly bacterial magazines. The Food Channel is playing on a tv high in the corner of the wall. Emeril is making a risotto. Deserted paper cups of coffee litter every available surface, as if a great Caffeine Monster barreled through bringing pathetic mocha comfort to all the worriers who then abandoned their drinks once the nurses came with information of their loved ones.

_"We need some room to work," the nurse explained. "We'll come get you as soon as we know anything."_

_Comforting, that—we don't know shit now about whether your grandmother is going to live or die, but once we figure it out we'll give you a shout._

And so they wait.

She keeps tuning in halfway through half-hearted conversations—_what room where is the what sepsis bone density are they going to 150 over warfarin Patrick don't abscess in the morning did you say spot overnight I don't know work tomorrow have to Alex Alex Alex_.

Bobby nudges her. She turns to her father, who is speaking at her.

"Alexandra, did your sister tell you what happened?"

"Sort of," she mutters. She really doesn't feel like talking, especially now, especially to her family, who she doesn't talk to much anyway. "She fell, right? It's another stroke?"

Her father hesitates. "Maybe. Well, no—not probably."

"Not probably," she murmurs. "Well, that clarifies things. Thanks, Dad." She feels 17 again, suddenly, mute and rebellious and pushing the boundaries of how far she could push her family, so she takes Bobby's large smooth hand in hers.

Her father winces, shakes his head. "Okay. Ah…" he looks around. "Everyone, Marjorie had some…tests done, a few weeks ago. You all know that she wasn't feeling the greatest."

Greg, her brother, lets go of Emily's hand and leans forward. "I talked to her the day the results came in. She said everything was fine. That she had low blood sugar or something, which was why she was always so tired."

Her father shakes his head slowly and Alex suddenly sees this portal spiraling out in front of her, this passageway into a world where something is wrong and she can't go back no matter how much she wants to. Bobby tightens his hand around hers.

"The cancer's back," Issy guesses, except she doesn't _guess_ because this is not a _game _of chance and luck and black and white checkered boards, this is not Texas Hold 'Em or Egyptian Rat Screw or Blackjack, this is her _grandmother_, and there should not be guessing about her grandmother when her grandmother never guessed herself, when her grandmother instinctively _knew _the right in every situation.

What is the right in this situation?

"It _might_ be that her cancer's back," her father emphasizes. "They're not sure yet. They were going to do more tests next week."

Greg is shaking his head, his face arching into disbelief. "She _told _me she was fine. The tests were _normal_."

"She lied," her mother says quietly. "She didn't want to worry you all. After the last time, she knew all of you were so worried…"

Bobby leans forward, and his voice is soft when he speaks. "I noticed that lump on her neck—it's in her lymph nodes?"

Her father nods reluctantly. "Two years ago, they found cancer in her lymph nodes. She had chemo, radiation, the works."

"But it went _away_," Greg says. "I don't understand. That thing on her neck—she told me it was a goiter."

Alex doesn't even realize she's standing until she feels herself wobbling on her feet. "She wouldn't lie to us! You—you don't know what you're talking about, like always," she snaps at her father. "She's not _sick_. She's not going to _die_."

"Alex," her mother whispers, then stops. Her father glares at her and she glares right back (_where is Gram, the mediator between us?_).

"Let's go for a walk," Bobby says, standing up.

"I don't want to leave."

Her nephew is staring up at her with big kid eyes, surveying her as if he's never seen her before—he's certainly never heard this tone from her before, pissed and watery and snapping and desperate.

"It might be good for you to get some air," her partner prods. "Stretch your legs."

"_No_, Bobby. I want to hear what the doctor has to say."

Her father's eyes on them, watching. Assessing.

Issy tries to take her hand but she jerks away. "Go. I'll call you if we hear anything. It could be a while yet while they run more tests."

"Go get some coffee," Greg says in an unnaturally stunned, kind voice—isn't everyone so fucking nice, trying to cajole her as if she were someone breakable and dainty, someone needing protecting and hovered over (_yeah, right_). "You can bring me a decaf back."

"Get your own fucking coffee." Her voice breaks and now she's pissed, because she's going to cry right here right now in front of _everyone_, and she hasn't cried in front of anyone since she was kidnapped two years ago.

It is this more than anything that makes her stalk off, pressing her hand to her mouth.

Bobby catches up to her outside of the waiting room. He touches her back, but she brushes him off and keeps going.

Motion, motion is good. _E_motion is not. Maybe one can prevent the other. What is the right here? Anger. Anger is good.

"You're going to have to be more careful back there, Bobby. You're certainly not acting very _partnerly_."

"What did I do?"

"Rubbing my shoulders? All the looks? God, Bobby, my father was a cop. He notices things like that."

"He—he wouldn't approve?"

"No!"

"Oh." He falls silent, stuffing his hands in his pockets and sliding right back into careful blankness. He edges away so there's more space between them and she sighs, pushing her hands over her face and feeling like she's underwater.

"It's not _you_—it's the fact that you're my partner. He's a big believer in the rule that partners shouldn't get involved. He thinks it'll 'compromise the integrity of the mission.' It's…" she sighs again. "It's a long story. One time he was partnered with this woman who had a crush on him, and she ended up shooting a suspect prematurely because she thought he was pointing a gun at my dad when all it was a bent-out paperclip, one of those huge ones. She was so shaky at the thought of him being shot that she couldn't think logically, just saw the thing in his hand and shot. The suspect died, and they never solved the case."

They fall silent, both thinking of Wizneski waving the gun at the two of them, of Bobby's need to get her out of the room _immediately_ so he could concentrate on verbally disarming him.

"It's good your family's here," he says at last. "They all seem nice."

"You've met them before."

"I know." He looks away. "I'm just—talking. I don't know. I don't know what to do."

She turns and pulls him into a secluded corner away from the bustle of the rest of the hospital. Buries her face in his chest, breathing in with his breaths. He's tense, holding himself carefully as if he would like to pull away, but he doesn't. After a minute she hears his breath catch in his throat and he wraps his arms around her.

"I don't want my grandmother to die," she murmurs against his heart.

"I know." He runs his hand down her back. Shifts his weight from side to side but doesn't let go, for which she is grateful. She just needs something to hold on to, just for a minute. Even though they really _should _move—it's not exactly safe, standing here exposed and cuddling out in the open, but they don't.

When she does finally lift her head she finds him watching her guardedly. "Thank you," she says, slightly calmer now. "I needed that."

He nods once, his eyes on hers. She reaches up and touches his stubbled cheek, and as he closes his eyes she leans forward and up and kisses him softly, hesitantly, waiting to see how he'll respond. He doesn't, at first, stays still in her embrace and doesn't respond at all, but then she feels his body relax against hers and he's moving, kissing her back, one hand on her waist and one scrabbling up in her hair.

"Bobby," she whispers, pulling away so she can see him. His eyes are closed so she can't read his expression, she can't tell what he's thinking, but then he claims her mouth again and she wraps her arms around his neck.

"The doctor's ready." Her heart lurches and she rips herself away from her partner only to find Greg watching them with his eyebrows quirked into a raise and his mouth twisted into the ghost of a smirk. "You know, whenever you two are."

***


	5. Chapter Four

Alex looks like she's seen a ghost, Bobby thinks. Even after she gets Greg to swear his silence she still looks ill, and now she won't even _look _at him, much less touch him.

"You're back," her father says, glancing suspiciously at him. "Good. The doctor's waiting."

"Is she alive?" Alex whispers.

"She's stable for now."

He glances over at Eames and tries to figure out if she's focusing on "stable" or "for now."

She's in critical condition, they find out. Some cardiac distress. Some internal bleeding, which they stopped. She's on a respirator, unconscious, might wake up, might not. They'll run some tests in the morning.

There's nothing they can do, so after another uncomfortable hour of hanging out amidst the paisley Alex decides they can leave.

In the car, on the way back to her place, Alex stays lost in her own world, not making a sound, not moving. He glances over at her chest (to see if she's _breathing_), and he can't tell.

"Alex?"

She turns to him, her eyes painfully wide and clear. "What?"

"Just…checking."

Her head swivels back to stare out the window and it's downright creepy, a horror movie with dolls come to life, because usually she is not like this. Usually she is the one who can cope with everything without going all quiet and sick and painful.

It's not the right time, he knows, but it's been eating away at him. "You never told me your grandmother had cancer before."

"I _knew _you would pick on that."

"What? Pick on what? I'm just wondering why."

"It was two years ago," she snaps. "Okay? Right with everything with Jo, and I didn't tell you because you had enough to worry about with your mother, and I was just trying to compartmentalize so I didn't fall apart completely—after a while she was fine so I just never said anything, Bobby, okay?"

"Okay," he says softly.

He drives the rest of the way back to his apartment in the silence that he craves. He forces a reassuring smile every time Eames looks over at him, but he's really thinking of how mad she was when he didn't tell her about his mother's illness right away, and how she was doing exactly the same thing to him. They really _are _alike, he thinks.

If opposites attract, they're screwed.

Half an hour later he finds a spot and parks and gets out. Halfway across the parking lot, he turns around and realizes Alex is still sitting in the car. He stops, pauses. Considers. Finally retraces his steps and opens her door, crouching down so he can see her. "Eames, let's go inside."  
She puts her hand up to her mouth and closes her eyes, the lines of her face suddenly grim. He _feels_ her, suddenly, feels every molecule of her pulsing away in front of him; he feels her pain, her sadness, her longing, her worry—he wants to soak her up until they're fused together and everything that is not them slips back against the power of them _together_ so everything can be okay.

But he won't have this Wrinkle In Time absorption of ions melding and worlds colliding unless a Mr. Jenkins (or three) suddenly appears in front of him, and so far his vision is remaining stuffy teacher-free, filled only with his tired partner.

"You don't know what will happen," he says softly. "Maybe she'll make a full recovery. The damage might be minimal, it's…I mean, hey, people wake up after twenty year comas, right? Sometimes?" She starts to shake. "No!—not, not that that's going to—to _happen _or anything, Eames, I mean"—he swallows—"you said your grandmother was strong, right? Maybe she'll just pull out of this and everything will be fine again and—"

"Everything's not going to be fine, Bobby," she whispers. "Face it. Grow up. I think you're waiting so much for everything that's messy to be magically melted smooth again when that's just not how things work. Shit happens. People—people die."

He feels the sudden sparking throb in the back of his throat that indicates imminent tears. "Alex, I'm going inside. You're welcome to come up if you'd like."

And he walks away.

He's in bed when she comes up an hour later (a long, sleepless hour). He keeps his eyes closed even though he's wide awake because this is what they have become, faking sleep and hurling words and yet unable to break away from each other because he does love her and she loves him and alone it is even worse.

Eames sits down on the edge of the bed beside him and doesn't speak, until his curiosity forces his eyes open to see what she's doing. "You all right?"

She nods, shakes her head. "I just needed some time. I'm…Bobby, I'm sorry."

"Forget it. Everyone says things when they're upset." _That they might not have said otherwise, but that doesn't mean they might not be thinking them all the time._

"Yeah." But she doesn't sound convinced and neither does he.

The bed dips slightly as she lies down beside him. Minutes pass, and he can feel his partner lying beside him, still and miserable.

The bed dips again as he pushes everything else away and rolls over and puts his arms around her.

***

An hour later she wakes up suddenly, heart pounding, sitting straight up in bed before even realizing she's awake and fumbling for her cell phone.

Maybe they called in the night and she missed it.

Maybe her grandmother's dead and she doesn't even know it—how _wrong _not to know your grandmother's dead, how odd not to even be thinking about her or life or death, just the normal distracting problems as always, and then your grandmother's _dead_.

No missed calls.

Surely they would have called if anything happened.

She breathes easier and glances around. Everything is quiet. Even the traffic around her house has stilled. The wind does not blow, the stray cats outside do not howl, and the phone does not ring.

Even Bobby's not snoring. She looks down at him and sees that he's passed out on his stomach, his face pressed into the mattress just below the pillow and his arm flung above his head.

She presses her hand into his lower back just to feel him being alive. His shirt is slightly damp and sticks to his skin, a thin layer of sweat clinging to him. He doesn't move. Still sleeping. She bends over at the waist and presses her face into the top part of his back, the soft hump of his shoulder.

"Alex," he slurs, his voice thick and bleary with sleep. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"Sure?"

"Yep."

He goes back to sleep.

Because she can, because she's alive and he's asleep, she presses a kiss into his shoulder blade and then slides out of bed. For a minute it's almost normal—alarm off, robe on, hair swept back, fumbling in the darkness—but then she goes out to his still living room and calls the hospital to check on her grandmother.

No change.

Respirator.

Irregular heartbeat.

Maybe brain damage.

Maybe this is it, the closing of the curtains on audience members howling for an encore.

Despite her restless hour of sleep she feels like she's been awake for a very long time, and that she's going to _be _awake for even longer.

Breakfast is something normal, something she did before this happened, so she forces herself to eat. The coffee tastes weak, spindly and pathetic. Yogurt so bitterly acidic it makes her shudder—like pineapple on just-brushed teeth. It settles unpleasantly in her stomach so she goes into the living room and sits on the couch, her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs, and she waits.

The sun rises behind clouds, filling the living room with a thick hazy light.

Eventually Bobby comes stumbling out of the bedroom, drenched in the hold of sleep—he always wakes up like he's just escaped a trance, probably because he fights sleep so much that when he finally succumbs his succumbtion is complete and overwhelming.

He sits down beside her on the couch and she tells him what the nurse said and he listens and nods and murmurs appropriate things but he is just not _there_, not present, floating off somewhere where he is untouchable.

"I'm not going into work today. I'm going to go back up to the hospital and sit with my family for a while."

He nods, rubs the beginnings of his beard. "I'm…not going in either."

"You don't have to stay with me."

"It's not just that, although I do want to. I just feel—I don't know."

"Zombie-eske?" she supplies, and he gives her a faint grim smile.

"Something like that. Like I'm not really here."

She bends her head to her knees and keeps going until she's leaning against him, a tight ball of worry and sadness.

And although he is warm and comfortable when he puts his arms around her, he also feels like nothing more than a hollow streak of lightning holding her—achingly brilliant and gorgeous for a second and then it's gone.


	6. Chapter Five

Other people die. Other people die all day long. She hears it in the doctor's voices as they call for families to come out into the hallway, and she hears it in the screams that follow. It's in the clack of shoes on the floor. In the slow labored movements of people surfing the cafeteria line with their trays. In the way mothers hush their children, and in the way shoulders are rubbed reassuringly. It's in the florescent lights and the paisley chairs. It's in _everyone_, and everything.

You can be affected by people when they are alive—you can love them and talk to them and even fight with them, but in the end nothing affects you more than their death—the nothingness of it the biggest thing of all, perhaps. It maybe shouldn't be like that, but that's how it is. After death, you try to recall the way their fingers once clasped yours, but all you can picture are the IVs threaded through their veins. Their death becomes tied to them, an event thought of simultaneously with every remembered aspect of their life.

But she's getting ahead of herself because although her grandmother is just barely alive she is, in fact, _alive_.

The waiting room, again. She senses that she is going to grow to _hate _this place. The unending sameness of chairs clustered and people worrying and herself endlessly trying to convince her family that her partner is only here because he's her _partner_ and nothing else.

But they are banned from her grandmother's room while the doctors run yet more tests, so in the waiting room they stay, all of them, cutting work and school so they can sit together and wait but not talk.

Patrick's getting restless so she lies down on the floor with him and they color together, working at a picture of Elmo holding scribbled in balloons.

Patrick looks up at her, a blue crayon in his hand poised over Elmo's nose. "What color is Elmo supposed to be?"

"What color do you think he's supposed to be?"

He shrugs, and his shoulders touch hers. "I don't remember."

"You make him whatever color you want to," she tells him, and so they end up with a green Elmo with purple polka dots all over his furry little body. "Perfect."

While her nephew colors the grass (orange), she draws a castle in the white space in the background. Flags fluttering and towers thickly leaning and doors wide open and inviting until it looks like Elmo is a leprosied jester bringing balloons into these stately grounds where knights dance and kings proclaim and people live.

She draws the final turret and then looks up to find Bobby watching her steadily.

"What?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing. Nice castle, Alex."

Her father rattles his newspaper over in the corner and her partner bends his head over his book again.

"I think Elmo's going inside," Patrick says seriously, studying the picture. "He's taking balloons to the princess. They'll get married."

"Will they live happily ever after?" But she's looking at Bobby, and he's looking back at her, and something flashes between them.

Patrick is oblivious, leaning in until his nose touches the page. "Yeah. Happily ever after."

"Good to know."

Bobby gives her a faint smile and she has to bite her lip against the tears threatening. _If only it were that easy._

"They'll have babies," Patrick decrees. "Elmo and the princess babies."

Eyes closed, his fist pressed against his forehead, Greg snorts. "Gonna be some ugly-looking rugrats."

"Maybe we should do another picture, Pat."

"Babies," he insists. "You had a baby, didn't you, Alex?"

She can taste the last cup of coffee she had from a few hours ago. "I did, honey. You know I did. I gave birth to you." They've never hidden the fact that she was his surrogate mother from him, and encouraged him to talk about it if he had any questions.

And he did. He _did_. So many questions. _So I lived inside you then huh must've been weird_ it was a little _but you're not my mommy _no honey I'm not _you're my aunt Mommy's my mommy_ that's right _so how did I get inside you_ well there's a process, see, _did it hurt_ ah just a bit _did you like having me inside you_ oh honey I did I did but I'm glad you're outside now so I can get to know you _but didn't you know me inside you_ I did but it's different—and on and on and on and each question is a little dropping clunk in her stomach, a little wrenching knot, but she carefully blanks out her face and gives him the answers he demands until he loses interest and hops off to something else, leaving her exhausted and full of bittersweet memories.

Issy glances over at them and sighs. "You have crayon on your face, kiddo. Come here."

Patrick obligingly goes to his mother and leaves her behind, 42 years old and alone on the floor with a coloring book of orange grass and impossible dreams.

"Pass me a crayon."

She glances over and finds her partner sprawled out on the floor beside her, looking uncomfortable but determined.

"I didn't even see you get down here."

"My speed, my agility," he murmurs, flipping the page. "Ow. My back. I'll do Bert and you do Ernie?" He lifts his eyes to her nephew huddled in Issy's lap. "Is it all right if I color this with Alex, buddy?"

Patrick nods and gives him a sudden blinding grin, which he attempts to return.

Despite the eyes watching them, Alex presses her forehead into his arm for a second before beginning to work on the stripes on Ernie's shirt.

Her partner colors carefully, shading Bert's head and hands and feet bright yellow before moving on the clothes and the umbrella in his hand.

"I feel like I'm four," she murmurs, working on a rubber duck and bubbles on Ernie's head.

"I feel like I'm fifty and coloring a puppet," he murmurs back.

"You, Detective, are a _fantastic _colorer. Haven't gone outside the lines once."

He draws a tiny, crayon-blotchy heart in the corner of the pages, and she swallows. He seems so…normal. It fades in and out with him, and right now things seem right.

"I'm going to go for a walk," she says, sitting up. "Why don't you come with me?"

He hauls himself off the ground and follows her out to the hallway, where she pulls him to her and kisses and kisses him, pressing him into the wall and not caring who sees them.

"What's this for?" he murmurs unsteadily when she breaks away, gasping.

She runs her hands up and down his chest and leans in again. "For being _you_. For being nice."

"I'm not nice."

"Fuck, Bobby, you _are_." She glances around. No one's watching. She drags him down the hall, searching, until she finds a tiny little closet tucked away in the corner. She's pulling him inside before he even has a chance to protest.

"_Eames_—"

"Shut up." She shoves him up against the wall and cranes her mouth to his, her fingers traveling down to his distended fly. "For once in your life—oh—"

"Don't really think this is the place," he gasps, but his fingers are slipping up under her shirt and snapping hooks open and tugging her bra away until her nipples are pressing hard into his palms and he's kneading flesh gently. "Or the time. God, _Alex_…"

"We're both alive," she mutters into his chest. "Mmmmm. Alive, and together."

His hands are shaking as he pulls away from her, his breath coming quick and harsh. "Is that what this is about? Alex, you're afraid of what's going to happen to your—"

"Don't say it!" she snaps, and she grabs him in her hand perhaps harder than she intended—he moans and winces at the same time, and his head falls forward on to her shoulder. "Just, Bobby, ah…" His fingers brush down from her waistband and she chokes on her words.

"'Lex—don't want to take advantage—bad situation; don't want to hurt you more," he's muttering into her neck even as she's urging him on and he's unzipping her and his fingers are dancing and stroking inside her and she's trembling and holding on to him for support.

"Keep going," she gasps, and his hands are getting more frantic and she's pounding and aching and slippery sliding wet and guiding him to her and then he's inside her—_franticer and franticer_, she thinks dimly, clutching his shoulders and pressing her mouth into his neck so she doesn't scream and he's groaning and holding her waist steady as he thrusts one and a two three _four fivesixseveneignitennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn._

They exhale on the same breath.

He slides out of her as she pushes against him, trying to hide the tears mingled with sweat on her face.

"Are you all right?" Vaguely horrified, he sounds. "Alex—you okay? I didn't _hurt _you, did I?"

"No. No. It's not you. Everything—I just…I don't know." She takes a deep breath and steps back. "I'm all right."

He bends down to look her eye to eye, his hand cradling her head. "Are you sure? I didn't mean to—"

"I'm _fine_," she snaps. "Really. This has nothing to do with you."

Bobby nods slowly and then doesn't stop nodding, his thumb rubbing her cheek. She turns away and turns on the sink, ripping out paper towels and shredding them as her partner steps up to the sink beside her and quietly squirts soap on his hands.

They don't speak again as they clean up and zip up and adjust everything, until Alex sticks her head out into the hallway to check if anyone's coming. "It's clear," she says shortly, and Bobby pops out beside her.

"Do I look all right?"

"You mean like you just haven't had sex? Yeah, you're fine."

"I don't understand why you're mad," he says quietly. "I thought you initiated it—and I know I should have pulled away but it's…been so long, and you were pretty hellbent on it, and…"

"It's not _my _fault it's been so long," she snaps. "And I keep telling you—_don't worry about it_. I'm not mad at you."

"Okay." He follows along beside her for a minute of silence, silence that she savors, before he has to break it. "So why _are _you mad?"

She thinks about saying, "Because my grandmother's dying, jackass," but she just wraps her jacket tighter around herself and ignores him until he falls silent again.

***

**A/N. I have no explanation for this. I'm no prude, but in writing usually I'm more of a "fade to black" kinda girl, mostly because I hate the vocabulary. I could barely bring myself to write nipple. Cock, pussy, clit, suck, throbbing, ooh baby, yeah fuck me harder—it's just…bad. Clinical. Euphemisms are even worse—manhood, member, engorged, ew. It can—and has—been done well by better writers than me, but it's not something I can pull off. **

**Also, these will probably be the last chapters I post for a while. Bit of a writing crisis of faith at the moment—not really with this, but I started a new book and six chapters into it have decided it's weird beyond belief or readability, so I'm trying to figure out if I should revise it or just throw it the hell away. It's leached into everything. I'm realizing more and more it's not so much a matter of just banging out your six hours and going to bed. Someone whom I can't recall said "you either have it or you don't." **

**I **_**will **_**finish this story, though, eventually. It just might be awhile. **


	7. Chapter Six

_Chapter Six_

**A/N. It's been too long. **

And then they get back to the waiting room and her family's gone. "Something's happened," she says unsteadily. "We were off having sex while she was dying."

"She might not be dead," he mumbles, but she's gone, running off down the hallway with her hair flying out behind her.

All these _emotions_ circulating in the air around him. Prodding him. All this worry. The potential for more pain, yet again, and it's pain he can do nothing about.

He trudges after her.

Just outside of curtain 14 he finds Issy pacing back and forth, tugging her dark hair into a ponytail over one shoulder and then letting it go. She does this over and over and over again, and it is only when he taps her on the shoulder that her eyes clear and she notices him.

"Bobby," she says as a greeting. She says his name almost exactly like Alex—same infliction, but without the years of history and emotion behind it.

"Isabella." He can't call her Issy. "What happened?"

She blinks, and silent tears track down her face. "They're taking her off the respirator. I just…couldn't watch."

Bells go off of a monitor behind the curtain. He touches her elbow, feeling numb. "I'm sorry."

She gives him a strange look. "Sorry? They're taking her off because she can breathe on her own. That's _good_, Bobby. I just can't stand seeing the tubes come out of her throat."

At this point death is so confused and mixed up with life that it's taken on a substance of its own, something sticky and oozing and messy and consuming. Marjorie was dying, and then she was (is) living, and his mother was dying for so long that at the end even her life was a kind of death, really—and how he thought Eames was dying when she was kidnapped and how he couldn't do anything to save her but then she was alive and he is alive and everyone is alive just not for long because life always ends in death; death always finds its way, final destination, last stop, everybody off, goodbye goodbye goodbye.

Issy is crying harder in front of him. He reaches out and gives her a strange far away hug, because when someone is crying sometimes that's all you can do. She folds against him and hangs on.

He holds her steadily. Hopes she can't smell her sister on him. But she doesn't say anything or even pull away until Jack sticks his head out of the curtain, looking for her, and she goes back in.

This is a family moment, so he stays outside the curtain. Alone.

Everything's so _silent_.

There's no air moving in this hospital, no circulation; it's all just dead air lying deathly still on top of him in this smothering layer he can't fight his way out of.

All this death.

Is the same thing happening to him?

This fog he can't see out of.

This water and this time he can't swim to the surface.

And yet, Bobby, death isn't usually unprecipated. Life doesn't end without a reason (there is no reason in this).

His heartbeat suddenly seems to have taken over his body. He can _feel_ it—**thump thump thumpthump ththump thump **_pause_** thump thumpthumpthump **_pause_** .**

The shaking starts, and then the fear. Swooping in to clutch him. Buzzing. Millions of prickly spore balls seizing in on him all simultaneously so he's electric and alive and dying and afraid.

_Sit down sit down don't pass out_.

But the ground's disappeared.

_Least no one else is around._

_Alone._

_Fucking sick of this oh God oh Eames oh oh oh oh oh oh _**thumpthumpthump thumpmp thump ****THHTPTMHTPTPTMHHMMHTP**

Spinning like weight in head only weight gone from rest of body utterly top head heavy going to spin cartwheels—

Going to start this motion head first feet over head again over and over head and over and feet and over and over and headover and over and over and over and over and feetover and over and over and over and over and over until what he doesn't know because motion is the pure point of it surely just to move to run to flee but can't because _frozen_ and toppling sweat surfacing and—

"Bobby?"

—and stiff legs buckling and hello _there's _the ground—

"_Bobby?_"

Someone's crying.

Something crouches down in front of him, a compact block of feelings and steady central nervous impulses.

Something takes his hand (something's going to take _him_, take him away from this land and Eames and life itself).

**thumP**

"Bobby, listen. Can you hear me?"

Vaguely.

Like down a long hallway.

Fingers like lava.

Death dormant.

Waiting for the explosion.

Waves waiting.

_Swim._

"Honey."

"It's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay. You're right here. I'm right here."

**thump thump thump thumpthump thump thump thump thump**

Breath great billowy clouds of ash.

Heat.

'S going to scorch Eames.

I fear heat.

I fear death.

I fear life.

I fear death.

**Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.**

"It's _okay_, Bobby."

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Eames' hand in his.

He is sprawled back against the wall, propped up half-assed and ineffectually; his bones feel like liquid and his blood feels like metal and he feels like he's going to wobble over and melt down into the floor until the gelatinous mess that is _him _is going to seep away into the floor drain—and clog it, probably, stuff up the little drain holes so even in viscous death he will be trapped and there will be no escape—

thump thump thumpthump thump

Eames sits down on the floor beside him, sits so close she's on top of him, pretty much, and she puts her arms around him and he leans against her because his body isn't cooperating enough for him to stand up.

"Panic attack?" Eames guesses. Collapsed against her, he nods, then stops, because no, not really—clinical "panic attack" doesn't begin to sum up what **this **is and yet, and yet, he supposes it is.

She rubs his shoulder. He wants to cry—her fingers so steady and tethering against his arm.

Someone _is _crying.

He looks up to see Patrick hovering above him, tears tracking down his face.

_Saw the whole thing._

_Scared the hell out of him._

"It's okay, Pat," Eames says. "He's all right. Go back to your mom, okay? Just give us a couple of minutes."

Patrick gives him a terrible you-scarred-me-for-life look (_what did I do? Did I scream? I bet I screamed. I bet I swore, reaching out staggering and pathetic and monstrous) _and then disappears behind the curtain.

He breathes in, chokes on his breath, has a coughing fit where he's too tired to cough but he _has _to cough so it comes out weak and pathetic and _he's _pathetic, he supposes.

_I'm sorry, Eames._

_Everything._

_So sorry._

He manages to look up. No one's there—just Eames holding on to him.

Comforting.

He was dying, and no one noticed save the five year old, and yet, and yet he wanted no one to notice (do you really want anyone to watch your death?), because there's nothing anyone can do.

Eames buries her head in between his neck and his chest and his shoulder. Soft skin. Heavy head. Gossamer hair. Fiery brains.

_So sorry._

She lays her hand flat against his chest again, pressing her palm against his calming heart.

_Eames._

She rubs her shaking hand up to his neck. He leans into her even more, soaking up the connection, the humanity of it all. He bends his head to her neck. His hand slips to her side, tugging her shirt up so he can rest his hand on firm exposed skin.

"Is your grandmother okay?" he murmurs, dragging his lips up and down her neck as he speaks (_she's still alive I'm still alive 's okay_). "She's breathing on her own and everything?"

Eames nods, tugging him closer. "Still unconscious, but off the respirator."

He responds to her immediately, tightening his arms around her. It's always like this, after. He wants to take Eames and go huddle up with her somewhere, block the rest of the world out and just soak up the one person he trusts. He just wants one time where he can _let himself go _and allow his wastedness to come to the surface, and allow her to comfort him. He wants to lay on his bed and close his eyes and feel the cotton of the sheets rubbing his cheek and Eames rubbing his back, and he wants to feel the quiet darkness in the room surrounding them, and he wants to drift off to sleep knowing that when morning comes he is going to be better and Eames is going to be there and they'll go out, for a bit, go get breakfast or something, and then just come home and _be_; they'll do something occupying but not strenuous-organize his books, maybe, working silently together with no need for questions and answers just needing each other always just needing each other-

But Eames needs to be at the hospital. And he needs to be able to take care of himself, because Eames is not going to always be there, once she sees how..._broken _he actually is.

"Let's go," Eames murmurs. "The doctor said she's going to be out for a while yet, probably until tomorrow. Let's…get you home." As if he were a project, something to be tackled and ticked off a list (got Goren home _check_). And he knows that he's an imposition, a big, blocky imposition, and yet he can't quite bring himself to push her away because he so desperately needs this on such a basic human level that to protest his fineness and insist that she stay here is unthinkable and yet it's what he has to do and-

She kisses his cheek and suddenly he's crying, silent tears slinking down on to her shoulder.

"Oh, Bobby." And she sounds like she's going to cry herself. "Let's just go, honey, okay?"

But he's crying harder, broad shoulders shaking, his fingers scrabbling at her back.

_Too much this is too much I can't—_

Eames produces some sort of a clutched sound in her throat and grips the back of his neck. "Come on, honey," she whispers. "It's okay. It's okay. Calm dow—it's okay."

Calm down.

That catchall of comfort when you cannot be comforted.

And he thinks, well, I would if I _could_, but it's not by choice that I'm sitting in the hallway sobbing.

But Eames is right; he should calm down.

He takes in a shuddery lung-stretching breath and lets go of her. Too ashamed to look at her.

And she doesn't look at him.

"Let me just go tell Issy we're leaving," she says quietly. "Will you be all right for a minute?"

He reaches out and catches her hand. "Stay. You…you should stay here. With your family." It's just words, words that he knows he has to say, but something in him breaks in the saying and he finds that he doesn't care anymore because everything's suddenly hollowed. No one tells you this in panic attacks-when they are over you feel almost post-orgasmic. Fucked out and wrung out and spent in every way imaginable. It feels almost...good. Maybe not good. Plateau-ish. You're shaky but tentatively balanced once more, until the next one, which you know is going to come again, but that is in the future and so for right now, in this single moment, you are almost something approaching okay.

"You're my family," she mutters. Still not looking at him. "My grandmother's still unconscious and probably will be until tomorrow. She won't know if I'm here or not."

_I'm family._

In his experience, family brings heartbreak.

He staggers to his feet and grips the tilting wall. "Eames, please. I'll go. I'll go home, get some sleep—you can stay here with everyone _in case she would wake up_, and I'll be fine."

"Don't tell me what to do!" she snaps. "I said I'm coming with you, and I'm coming with you, okay, Bobby?"

He looks at her properly. She looks thin, ragged and worried and just beginning to come apart at the seams (_oh, Eames_), and mostly tired. A silence stretches out before them, vast and cavernous, and all he can think to say is, "I'm sorry."

"I need a shower anyway. Just—hang on a minute."

And she disappears behind the curtain, keeping one foot out in the hallway as if to say _don't you dare run away Robert Goren I will chase after you because my heel is watching_.

He stays in the hallway. He has no other options-claustrophobia enclosing again with _that _lovely realization but stave it off stave it off keep staving hang on hang on hangonhangonhanghanghanghang-

Eames emerges a minute later, wordlessly taking his hand and tugging him along after her until his body starts properly moving again.

"I told them you were sick," Eames says. "If they would say anything later."

"Noted," he says quietly, and for a terrible second she gives him a _look_, fire and heat and torture and _helplessness_.

"Not that you _are _sick, but…" her voice breaks. "I didn't know what else to tell them."

"It's okay."

Back to the caverns.

She takes him back to her house, unable to stomach the idea of going back to his tomb of an apartment, full of once pristine corners gone dusty and once organized books gone into disarray. He doesn't take care of anything anymore. Not his apartment, not the bodies, not himself. _She _takes care of the bodies now, at work, and of the decision-making. And she takes care of him as much as she can (as for the apartment, well…some things just aren't her responsibility).

He doesn't take care of her anymore, either. Not that she ever let him before. Once, maybe, the week after she was kidnapped. But that was it—other than their normal everyday looking out for each other; coffee brought to the other, a hand secretively gripped in the elevator when needed, unexpected kisses late at night when the other couldn't sleep. And that was how she wanted it. Two separate people, working together, in a relationship together, there for each other but still capable of independence. She _had _the two-into-one melding already, with Joe. She's not ready for it again.

But it's happening before her eyes. And not for the right reasons, if she's being perfectly honest. She knows he loves her, but that's not the reason he's letting himself slip off into her.

It's just that he can't do it anymore. She's picking up the slack, taking care of both of them until it feels like they _are _an old married couple, indistinguishable; whenever you think of one you think of the other as well.

Much like Marjorie and Frank, her grandfather. But Frank died years ago.

And Bobby is not going to die.

She's so tired. All these emotions. The promise for more emotions ahead, either way—if her grandmother wakes up, or if she doesn't. If Bobby gets better…or if he doesn't.

Bobby crawls into her bed and closes his eyes. Pretend sleep. She kisses his wet cheek and he doesn't flinch.

She gathers her clothes and goes off to the shower. Stands under the beating water crying so hard so fast it feels like she's spinning off into another plane, another dimension; until it feels like she is the shower herself and there's no need for the running faucet with the amount of water leaking out of her eyes.

_Too much this is too much I can't—_

And then she calms herself down and dries off and slips into bed besides her partner.

_Something has to change._

She slides over to him and puts her arms around him.

Eyes still closed, he nestles closer to her. She is hit with a sharp stab of love, of tenderness; this big body cuddled up to her, this genius with the staved off emotions of a child interrupted and forced headlong into adulthood far too early. This man whose family put him through hell even in their deaths. Ridiculous and sincere and needy and guarded and funny and anxious and probing and in love with her.

_I love him_, she thinks, as she prays, _Please don't let Patrick turn out like him. Let him be a child. Let him be loved. Let us protect him._

She has a thing for protecting people.

But she forgets about herself, sometimes. Look at her now: she forgot to protect her heart from this man—didn't think she really _had _to; he wasn't her type at all—and now she's hopelessly entangled up in him and yes, in love, and in so deep she's spending all this time worrying about him while her grandmother lies near death and just trying to wake up.

Eames stays awake until the very early hours of the morning when the sun's beginning to rise and then she passes out into a noxious doze, sick at heart even in sleep.

He sleeps, but it hurts him. He can feel himself lying in bed, passed out but still somehow aware, trapped in the night and his stiff and motionless body. Empty and diseased. _Going to die_, he thinks as he's—not exactly sleeping but gliding along on this cool cold blue plane of "sleep," icy and distant and full of unspoken words and unlived dimensions.

Time doesn't exist here. In the world, the real world, time is fucked out. Great gaping arcs splintering by as hours in fractions of seconds, while other seconds crawl by as slowly as lifetimes.

Sometime after the sun comes up he hears Eames get up and call Ross. _Not coming in today_, he hears. _…was with me last night…my grandmother. …sick. Too sick to come in. …the case…Wheeler. I know. I'm sorry. Might need to use some vacation time for the both of us. …tell him. Right._

Spiraling towards full awareness.

But if he opens his eyes the world will explode.

The bed shifts as Eames slides back in beside him. The sheets tremble, because so is she.

Soon she dozes off again. She hasn't been sleeping, either.

What's it like to sleep normally? To yawn when ten o'clock comes, to brush your teeth, set the alarm, fall into bed…and drift off? To wake up easily when the alarm goes off at six?

He doesn't know.

Neither does she.

They've never known, and they probably never will.

He thinks about getting up. Maybe he could make breakfast. Bring it back to bed. They could—

Who is he kidding?

He stays in bed, eyes closed, until Eames gets up again.

"You really don't have to come with me today," she says quietly when he meets her in the kitchen. "I don't think"—she swallows—"I don't think being in the hospital is…helping you, any. Things seem to be getting…worse."

He is hit with another sudden pulse of love for her, feeling it through the grayness, fiery and cautious and worried and tired and trying to sort her way through what is right here.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm hugging you." He wraps his arms around her and brushes his lips against her cheek. "I'm…soaking up you because I won't be with you today."

Despite her earlier words about his not having to come with her, she tenses. "Where will you be?"

"I'm going out for a bit," he murmurs. "Just…to sort some things out. I just need to think, I think. Ha. That wasn't funny. I'm sorry."

"Are you going to be all right?" Her lips pressing into his shoulder, her words tunneling their way through his body straight to his heart.

"I'm fine, Eames. I'm just going to go for a run and then go into work for a couple of hours. I'll meet you back here after. I'll get takeout or something, and we'll have dinner together. No—I'll cook. And…we'll be normal."

Eames relaxes slightly in his arms. "Good, Bobby. That sounds good." The material of her shirt slides and rustles against him, a faint _siswhsssh_ of cotton rubbing cotton. He thinks suddenly of the curve where her cheek melds into her neck, the soft bony angle of it. Bends to kiss it—and she's arching up to let him, maybe hesitant, not as easy and carefree as usual but still arching when—

If there is one more consistently angsty instrument in the history of modern technology than the telephone he doesn't know what it is (_it's not ringing she's not going to call ever I'm going to die alone/oh why did she have to call __**now**__ when I'm in the shower and the water's going to drip into the phone and God it's cold/it's three am why is someone calling me something must be wrong/I told him to call at five if she hasn't returned yet and now the phone's ringing_)—he thinks all this in the blink of an eye (or maybe in the time it takes for the phone to ring exactly once), and then Eames is out of his arms and gripping the phone and blowing her hair out of her eyes as she closes them, preparing herself for whatever news is coming.

He watches her. Her eyes staying mute and chilly. He can't read her, when he can read everyone else. He never could.

"I'll be there," she says softly.

**A/N. I went semi-colon happy towards the end; if it's ungodly annoying tell me and I'll do some more revising.**


End file.
